Google Pauses April Fools Messaging
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 30, 2020
Google plans to cancel its annual April 1 jokes out of respect for those fighting COVID-19. It might be a lead for other brands to follow in light of the pandemic.
The company believes it would be in poor taste to follow through with the typical process of pranking readers …
I have done the April Fools Day marketing roundup story for MediaPost for the last three years. By now, I'm usually inundated with several dozen pitches. This year, just one brand no one has heard of pitched me a week ago. When I didn't respond, the PR person "circled back." I told her I was not planning to do a roundup because no one else thought it was in good taste, but if she'd like, I could write a story about how the brand she was pitching was still going ahead with their not-very-funny "gag" despite the country being in the middle of a national crisis. She didn't like that idea very much.